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Japanese management techniques & American Firms

Can Japanese management techniques be successfully applied to American firms? What are the ramifications of trying to bring Japanese management to American factories? Japanese management techniques received a great deal of attention during the 1970s and 1980s, and a number of American companies, including HewlettPackard, sought to use these tactics with American workers. Heralded at first as an answer to failing American competitiveness, a longer range view of Japanese management with American workers has shown that there are unanticipated problems that can arise. Toyota and General Motors operate a plant in Fremont, California as a joint venture. The plant, called NUMMI, provides an excellent example of Japanese management techniques transplanted to an American work environment.

Japanese management techniques involve an organization-wide approach to the manufacturing process. All aspects of a factory, including human resources, technical resources, plant layout and relationships with vendors are affected by the management philosophy. There is a high level of commitment to quality throughout all aspects of the organization and this commitment to quality extends to vendors, as well (Rehder, p. 88).

The NUMMI plant, for example, uses Just-In-Time management techniques (JIT) that result in vendors delivering component parts at precisely the time the parts are needed for assembly. JIT strives to provide each step in the assembly process with exactly the number of inputs and resources needed to complete that process. Simply put, a process is not performed if there is not a market for its output (Oliver, p. 23). JIT thus begins with market demand: if demand for a product does not exist, the product is not manufactured. This philosophy extends to each process of assembly. If there is not demand for the output of a process "downstream," the process is not performed.

Such a technique can only work in an environment in whi...

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Japanese management techniques & American Firms. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:05, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690461.html